LG Display has demonstrated a flexible OLED display that's 0.97 mm thin during a press presentation in Seoul. With the prototype the company shows it continues to invest in OLED. Later this year also a 99" panel should become available.
The 1.9 kilogram heavy panel has a size of 55", according to the Korean press agency Yonhap. The "wallpaper display", as LG names the screen, hung on the wall using a magnetic mat that on its turn was stuck to the wall. Because the panel is flexible, it can easily removed from the mat and hung again. The panel is much thinner than the currently thinnest OLED TV of LG, of which the OLED panel is 4.3mm thick. If and when the manufacturer will actually bring the thin panel on the market is unclear. Earlier LG promised to release a rollable TV screen by 2017.
LG Display presented the screen as a foretaste of its future products. The company wants to show that it will continue to invest in the future of OLED. Parent company LG Electronics is currently the largest manufacturer of OLED TVs in the world. OLED is regarded as a promising technology for TVs of the future, especially due to the high contrast.
LG released 55", 66" and 77" TVs this year based on the technology. According to Yeo Sang-Deog, president of LG Display's OLED division, there are plans to also a introduce a 99" panel this year.
In April this year there were rumors that LG Display wanted to drastically lower the production of OLED panels. Demand for Full HD panels would be low, while the yields of UltraHD OLEDs disappointed. The company would have lowered the expected sales of 700,000 panels to 500,000. Yeo now mentioned a target of 600,000 panels for 2015. In 2016 the South Korean technology giant hopes to sell 1.5 million panels. According to Yeo the yields improve fast enough to meet these goals.
According to Yeo the demand of OLED panels from other manufacturers is currently so high that LG Display can no longer keep up with demand. LG Display mainly sells the panels to LG Electronics but also supplies other manufacturers with OLED displays.
In the third quarter of this year LG Display hopes to be able to keep up with the demand again. The manufacturer wants to focus on large display sizes but also continues to invest in plastic OLED technology for small and rollable display. A P-OLED display is e.g. used in LG's own Watch Urbane.
